IMF States El Salvador Has Not Accumulated More Bitcoin, but Bukele Keeps ‘Buying’

The controversy regarding the compliance or non-compliance with the Bitcoin non-purchasing clause of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)-El Salvador deal has surged again.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) highlighted that, according to its own data, El Salvador is complying with the bitcoin non-accumulation agenda to which it committed during a press briefing at the spring meetings. However, the Central American country continues to report regular bitcoin purchases.

The question about this clause of the agreement arose again during the institution’s 2025 spring meetings, leading to more pressing questions from the cryptocurrency community regarding the status of the country’s cryptocurrency experiment.

Asked how the country could be complying with the purchasing restrictions, referring to the possibility of El Salvador shifting bitcoin from one account to another to be able to “add” to its reserves without making new purchases, the fund responded by confirming the country’s commitment to the stipulations of the deal.

In December, the institution granted Bukele’s administration a credit facility for $1.4 billion, conditioned on the confinement of the government’s bitcoin-related economic activities, including purchases.

“Let me say that I can confirm that they continue to comply with their commitment of non-accumulation of bitcoin by the overall fiscal sector, which is the performance criteria that we have,” said Rodrigo Valdes, Director of Western Hemisphere Department at the IMF.

At the same time, Valdes downplayed the relevance of bitcoin in this program, stressing that it encompassed “much more,” and it was “much deeper in structural reforms, in terms of governance, in terms of transparency.”

However, these statements led to confusion on social media given that the National Bitcoin Office reported having added more bitcoin since these declarations were made. This situation prompted questions from crypto enthusiasts, who are demanding more transparency about El Salvador’s alleged continued purchases.

“Maybe they are buying more bitcoin. We have no indication of that. Our performance criteria are looking at the overall fiscal sector. So far, they have no plans to accumulate more bitcoin in the sense that we measure it in our performance criteria, which is looking at the fiscal accounts comprehensively,” Valdes concluded.

A statement that was surprising to some, given that the government continues to report purchasing activity with this cryptocurrency asset class.

Nonetheless, the specific arrangements for acquiring these tokens remain shrouded in mystery.